The Super Bowl ring story is great. I love that Putin says he doesn’t even remember seeing the ring, but he’ll have another ring made for Kraft…instead of, you know, returning it.
Russians have a thing with stealing. It’s one of their favorite pass times, especially the political class.
Ha - yeah. That cracks me up. He said something about precious metals and stones.
For the second time. FK U
Looks like we have a nationalist here.
Why do you let this guy post such things? I do not understand this.
I can start the whole thread about indians, while I’m not doing this and not interested.
Women like to say once you go black you don’t go back. I like to say once you go double D you don’t go back.
The appropriate response is to explain why the stereotype is wrong, or insufficently conditionalized, or to compare the level of russian corruption with corruption in other locations. Or just to say that you’re glad that Russian equities have such a low PE ratio based on this stereotype because that means they are an awesome deal and you’re making money hand over (ungloved) fist because of it.
Simply saying FU, FU again isn’t really any better than the original assertion, which at least sounds plausible on the surface from my experience.
It seems that you just don’t like people to say anything bad about Russia, which I can understand if you are from Russia and proud of it, but FU is not an argument, it’s just you exploding all over the place like someone who hasn’t fapped for a week. For someone so convinced about his positions on topics like fapping or others, you should be able to handle some disagreement about whether Russian politicians are squeaky clean or not.
My job is not to ensure that only truth is posted here; there is no way I can know enough about the truth to do that, even if it were appropriate. It’s not even to regulate taste (I think the topic of this thread is a bit tasteless, but that is not a reason to nuke it, unless it becomes completely obscene and pornographic).
My job is to try to make sure that the conversation is civil and create an environment where the discussion leads to some kind of value. Sometimes that value comes from the pushback against bold assertions, and you could have done that here by explaining to us why this stereotype about Putin is so incorrect. In my experience, value pretty much never comes from profanities-filled posts, and that just leads to flame wars.
HAHAHAHAHAH FAP-FREE IN RUSSIA SONS.
Thanks for response. Much appreciated.
However this guy does not deserve anything more than what has been said.
WIll try to engage in value-adding discussions somewhere else.
This was just a blunt offence to all Russians.
There are a lot of Russians on this forum. I don’t see this as attacking all Russians. It’s an attack on the Russian political class, and plenty of Russians are as frustrated or more with their political class than people outside of Russia.
As for Putin’s personal life, people watch what Presidents and Prime Ministers do all the time. Plenty of people wondered about Mitterand’s mistresses and Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. It doesn’t mean “French people suck.” Putin likes to create this image of himself as a Macho Russian Man, so people look at his girlfriends and think “what would it be like to have all that power and just be able to make a move like he does.” Again, it’s not saying “Russians suck,” and if you know a bit of the Righeous Hacksaw’s history here, you would know that he actually expresses this as a form of admiration. A lot of people in finance (like TRH) really just want to have boatloads of money so they can buy and sell people and be as shallow as their base instincts will let them be. Personally, that’s not my taste and preference, but that’s what happens when you take 20 year olds and give them boatloads of money and shiny toys for filling in spreadsheets 10-12 hours per day.
A country’s PE ratio is obviously positively correlated with the frequency of fapping but its people.
Spurrious correlation, I guess? It’s just amazing, i’m starting to apply my knowledge!
It’s just amazing how you could not see it below:
and then he emphasises about the political class.
His statement means that I’m a bloody stealer and enjoy it, and spend my free time doing it!
Open your eyes…
Yes, I caught that later. So then you tell him to make a distinction between Russians in general, and the Russian political class.
Now let me get to my opinion, which may sound critical of Russians on the surface, but is more about why Russians and westerners (esp. Americans) have trouble seeing eye-to-eye on this issue. In short, I think it comes from the fact that there is a range of things that Americans consider “cheating” which Russians feel is just “the logical thing to do when presented with opportunities to bend rules.” In other words, Russians think “to cheat” requires more egregious activity than Americans do. As a result, an American will say “you cheated, we didn’t agree to that,” and the Russian will say “I didn’t cheat, you never expressly forbade that; and you’re just being a sore loser.”
For example: Do you think that Americans and Western Europeans are kind of gullible? Why do you suppose that might be?
Let me be specific and say that: I’m not accusing you of being a cheater who thinks that Americans are easy prey if you want to do that. I don’t know you well enough to make that judgement.
I’m suggesting that in Russia, people simply expect people to try to cheat more often than people do here and therefore they are more careful to monitor and enforce rules whenever they can. My sense is that when someone cheats in Russia, people tend to blame themselves for not being more watchful rather than blame the cheater for getting away with it. At times there can almost be an admiration for people with schemes, frustration to be sure, but also admiration as if they had executed a most excellent chess move. I get the sense that trickery is actually a kind of jousting match, where Russians actively try to prove who is cleverer than the next guy, and so these things sometimes happen just so that Russains prove they can do it.
So these stereotypes are reflections of cultural differences. A westerner might think “those darned Russians are always trying to cheat me,” whereas the Russian thinks “Why would you expect anyone to follow random rules, when they are barely monitored at all and breaking them is so clearly in a player’s self-interest. Your lack of monitoring was clearly a wink/nod to let me do it.” I don’t think the Russian even considers some of these things as cheating - merely playing the game of life - while the westerner does, which leads to this stereotype in the West that Russians are all cheaters and a frustration on the Russian side that they are unjustly being percieved this way.
I see this as a complex inheritance from Soviet times, when breaking and bending and getting around rules was simply a survival skill, because the rules were so inefficient and draconian that you had to break/bend them to survive. It would be surprising to see this take less than a generation or two to dissipate, and I don’t think the oligarchy has done all that much to help.
I don’t see Russians as bad people, but their moral and ethical compass does not align with mine the same way and it just makes sense to be aware of the differences. I try to stay away from accusatory terms like liars and cheaters and stealers, because I don’t think they see themselves this way (other than the people evaluating their political class) and it doesn’t make much sense to be overly antagonistic, but I do think that that a healthy awareness of the differences is essential to working productively.
Now I need to look up jokes about Russians taking things too literally.
No it doesn’t mean that YOU are a “bloody stealer.” It means that on balance “Russians have a ‘thing’ with stealing.” I never mentioned YOU specifically. I did mention specifically the political class. If you are a member of the Russian political class then yes, you are probably a “bloody stealer.”
The thing about stereotypes is that they don’t apply well to individuals, but can work well with groups. You might be the most honest man in Russia. On balance though Russia has a ‘thing’ with stealing. You can deny this, but I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming.
Take the Sochi Olympics scandal as an example. Take the Oligarchs and their theft in the 90s as another. Take the rampant internet fraud/hacking/theft that comes out of Russia as another example. It’s a theft culture where criminals are widely glorified and respected for their enterprising ability. Some like to blame communism, others the wacky corruption of the Yeltsin era, but you can’t spend more than a week in Russia and not notice it. There is a theft “thing.”
In the US, we have a gun violence “thing.” Most of us here probably don’t own guns, but we can all admit that there is a “thing.” In Russia you have a “theft” thing.
I noticed it as a student in Moscow. Our dormitory toilet didn’t have a toilet seat or toilet paper. We foreign students thought, ok well we will just go buy a new seat and some toilet paper and try to make the obshaga (dorm) a better place for all to live. So we bought a new seat and a big thing of toilet paper. The seat and toilet paper were stolen within a week. I found this amusing. From then on I bought my own roll and brought it with me every time I went to the bathroom. I realized that anything deamed public property (toilet seats or toilet paper) was just there for taking in Russia. If you didn’t steal it first, someone else would, so it would be almost immoral of you not to steal it. That kind of theft “thing.”
In Russia it’s not even considered theft, it just considered being smart. In the US, only people working in finance are “smart” enough to think this way.
You just said more or less the truth, so I have to agree.
It’s interesting that in Russia we make the same style of jokes about “stupid Americans” (no offence, please). There is even an industry of comedians who specialises on making jokes comparing Americans and Russians, with the most popular of them being restricted acess to the US ahaha
bchad has just describes the key motive for such jokes (law-abiding Americans vs sneaky Russians)
I really appreiate your extensive posts. And i do feel that the misunderstanding on my side was extinguished.
I always read your posts in a Russian accent.
I don’t think it’s really an issue with Russians in particular. People in the “Western” world are just into this whole spirit of fairness and social awareness. These people are the weird ones. Everyone else - Russians, Chinese, Indians, Nigerians, etc. - blatantly pollute the environment, pirate intellectual property, take advantage of the poor, or do other things that might be considered un-PC to US or similar people.
In the interest of US / Russia international relations, let me present Kate Upton NSFW